Richard Bodek Proletarian Performance in Weimar Berlin

Annotation

The late years of the Weimar republic were a time of disillusionment and economic disintegration, and nowhere were the forces competing for the political allegiances of the working class more active than in Berlin. This book examines the interplay of socialist and communist politics with the world of the working class and particularly its younger people. Drawing on sources such as newspaper articles, the text of agitprop plays, festival and concert programmes, and police reports, Professor Bodek provides a new angle on the forces at work in the proletarian sphere during the period, and highlights the different aesthetics and political theories of Social Democratic workers' choruses and Communist agitprop theatre. Particular attention is given to the latter, whose troupes wrote and performed their own material, thus acting as a medium for communication of the Communist Party's political line: to understand the troupes, the life of working-class youth of the time is investigated, describing and analysing unemployment, housing, education, and leisure activities, and examining its relationship to the Weimar state through its members' own eyes.